There's an interview at Deutsche Welle with Sima Samar, Afghan human rights activist. Two of her answers:
DW: Why did you decide to become a human rights activist? Was there any particular experience that induced you to choose this profession?
Sima Samar: One of the reasons why I became a human rights defender is the discrimination I faced in Afghanistan as a girl and the discrimination within the society over my religion and ethnicity. That put me into a position to start fighting for social justice. We've gone through a lot of difficulties. We lost a lot of our friends and relatives in this battle. We still have not achieved social justice in Afghanistan, there's still a long way to go. And that's why I'm continuing my work.
.....
You witnessed the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, during which many of your family members simply disappeared. After the Russians pulled out the Islamist Taliban established a harsh regime, especially for women. How did you experience this period?In the last 30 to 40 years since the beginning of conflict in Afghanistan I've witnessed different regimes and different kinds of human rights violations but unfortunately the violation of human rights continues. Only the level and structure are a little different. For example, only last week a girl was the victim of an honor killing because she was promoting vaccination. There's not enough accountability or condemnation in this context. We keep losing girls in Afghanistan every day and there's no strong action taken to stop this kind of violation of women's rights.
Samar ends by offering some reasons for optimism about the future. One of them is that 'the people have experienced the Taliban and armed groups so they don't believe or trust them anymore'.
